The International Fleet (often shortened to I.F. or IF) is an organization created to protect Earth from the alienFormics. The International Fleet was formed by the governments of Earth immediately following the First Formic invasion. The Fleet was created in order to represent a united front against the Formica and mount a defense against another possible invasion. They say that if one takes one step on the planet... the human race is as good as finished.

The Fleet has two commanding officials, the Polemarch, head of the Fleet and in control of ship movements, and the Strategos, at the head of the department of strategy.

In Ender's Game and Ender's Shadow, the responsibilities of the Fleet include the active recruitment of child leaders for Battle School. These children are taken to Battle School and molded into leaders for the International Fleet's armies in space. The Fleet implemented a system of monitors that were mounted on children's necks in order to watch their activity and determine whether they were eligible for Battle School.

Following the success of Ender Wiggin and his fellow recruited commanders in destroying the Formics, the International Fleet lacked a purpose and the Polemarch attempted to take over the Fleet and take all of the members of Ender's jeesh, his battle comrades, into custody. The coup proved unsuccessful due to the efforts of the two writers working under the pseudonyms of Locke and Demosthenes as well as jeesh member Julian "Bean" Delphiki.

Shortly after the attempted coup, the office of Strategos was abolished and former Strategos, Admiral Chamrajnagar, became the new Polemarch. The Fleet adopted a non-intervention policy on Earth except when the sovereignty of the Fleet is threatened or attacked.

The Fleet sent all of the members of Ender's jeesh to their respective countries on Earth. Political writer Locke warns that the Fleet should not send Battle School grads home for fear of nationalist wars breaking out between countries with armies led by their Battle School graduates or one country attempting to kidnap and hoard all of the Battle School graduates for their own army. However, only Ender, the leader of the jeesh, was not sent home but was instead sent to colonize one of the first of the former Formic homeworlds. Following their victorious return to Earth, the members of Ender's jeesh, except for Bean, are all kidnapped by Achilles de Flandres working for Russia. Admiral Chamrajnagar garnered most of the blame for not heeding Locke's warning. In return, the Admiral threatened to reveal the true identities of Locke and Demosthenes but later rescinded that threat.

In Card's fictional future universe, humanity is at war with an alienspecies known as the Formics, or, colloquially, buggers. Battle School is the training ground for the future leaders of Earth's war effort—most notably Ender Wiggin and Bean. At the school, students undergo a rigorous curriculum, designed to teach military strategy and tactics. As befits an elite school, only the very best and brightest students are taken. Prospective students must undergo invasive monitoring and a battery of tests to see if they are suitable for the academy.

Students are generally taken to Battle School at a very young age—5 or 6 years old. The common age of "graduation" is usually 12 to 14. While at Battle School, they are taught academic subjects; especially a heavy grounding in mathematics and science, a setup for work in space. For instance, Card describes Ender as learning trigonometry which, in the United States, is not taught until high school.[citation needed]

However, the academic work is not the complete focus of Battle School. Rather, the true evaluation of the students occurs in battle simulations which are run by the school's instructors. The students are divided into 41-person armies, most named after an animal (real or mythological). They fight mock battles in null gravity, armed with harmless lasers and suits that freeze when hit with a laser shot. These battles are used to test the tactical aptitude of the students. Their performance is used to evaluate their progress. As such, the student body places a great weight on the standings in these games, a perception which is encouraged by instructors. The object of the game is supposedly to 'destroy' or freeze all the enemy soldiers and then pass through the gate from which the enemy had entered. Ender's unconventional tactics somewhat subverted this victory condition. To pass through the gate, four soldiers must touch their helmets to each corner of the enemy gate, while another victorious soldier floats through.

Command School is an advanced training facility that appears in Ender's Game and is located inside the asteroid Eros. The facility is a labyrinth of winding tunnels and claustrophobic rooms, captured from the Formics in the First Invasion.

Ender Wiggin is sent to Command School prematurely, told that this was to be the place in which he would complete his training. Ender is instructed in highly advanced combat tactics by none other than Mazer Rackham, the hero of the Second Bugger War. Ender is introduced to a virtual reality game that simulates every aspect of space combat. After quickly defeating the computer, Ender is told that he is to be pitted against Rackham. Unbeknownst to him, he is in reality commanding squadrons of starships sent from Earth years ago to launch a pre-emptive strike on the bugger homeworld.

After progressively harder and more draining "tests", Ender's team reaches the final world, with their ancient fleet against the thousands of Formic ships remaining—and all their queens. Launching a desperate, hopeless attack, Ender's forces reach the planet and launch their "Dr. Devices", which combined with the mass of the planet, causes an explosion which destroys everything—the few human ships remaining, the remaining Formic ships, and the planet itself. In the moment of victory, only then is he informed that the "game" was real, and that he just destroyed the Bugger race. Ender, already stretched beyond his limits, cannot take this news and collapses into a coma.

Ender eventually leaves Command School, and ventures to an uninhabited bugger colony to begin his life anew.

There are three primary governments in the Ender series. The first (listed in Ender's Game) is the Hegemony, a unified government that came into power to defeat the Formics. After the Formics are defeated, the Hegemony falls. Peter Wiggin with the help of ex-Battle Command leaders takes command of the Free People of Earth (FPE) to replace the Hegemony. The third government is an interstellar government known as Starways Congress and American formed republic government.

After the events of the first invasion (circa. pre-Ender's Game), the world unified against the buggers in an alliance termed the Hegemony. It consisted of three offices: the Hegemon (west), Strategos (all), and Polemarch (east). However, the Hegemony only had power and influence as long as the Buggers posed a threat. After the end of the Third Invasion, the Hegemony lost influence as various power blocs on Earth began jockeying for influence and territory. For five days after Ender's final battle, the League War raged, which was finally ended by the Locke Proposal, written by Peter Wiggin.

Starways Congress is the fictional interstellar government body in Speaker for the Dead and its sequels. It was established years after Ender's Xenocide in Ender's Game. It then re-established the calendar based on the founding of the Congress. Starways Congress was formed some time before the colonization of the Hundred Worlds, over a timespan from Ender in Exile to Speaker For the Dead. In the series, it is an interstellar government superpower which is believed to have been created as a successor to the Free People of Earth, although this is unconfirmed. It becomes the primary antagonist in the events of Speaker For the Dead. It consists of chairmen that vote on issues, like a Democracy. It ruled by controlling the ansible. Various groups (nationalities, ethnic groups, etc.) were granted permits to develop colonies and allowed to rule them according to their belief systems provided they followed the laws set by the SC.

Starways Congress rules according to the Starways Code. It is known to have the power to issue and revoke the charters of planetary governments. Starways Congress also holds some level of control over the ansible network; until the discovery of Jane, they believed their control absolute. In the novel Speaker for the Dead, Starways Congress declares the planet Lusitania to be in rebellion, revokes their charter, and removes all documents from that planet. They also order two xenologers to travel to the nearest planet to stand trial for their crimes.

Starways Congress' core belief is in the survival of the human race. When they learn of the danger posed by the Descolada, Gobawa Ekimbo, the leader of Starways Congress, says, "I want to make sure that it's the other guys that disappear." They order the termination of the planet on the grounds that humanity's survival preempts the survival of the Pequeninos.

When Bishop Peregrino orders his flock not to speak or answer the Speaker, Ender (Andrew Wiggin) threatens to petition for the status of Inquisitor. If the planet is found guilty of religious persecution, then their Catholic-only license is revoked, which would lead to Starways Congress to ship enough people off of the planet to allow for a sudden mixing of religion and culture so that it is fair to everyone.

Another example of this ability to control the people is seen in Xenocide and Children of the Mind on the world of Path. Path is an all-Chinese world with its own unique religion. Outsiders are not allowed in, and those who reside on the planet are not allowed to leave for fear of angering the 'Gods' and giving away their tightly held secret. Han Fei-Tzu is credited as being the only person on the planet capable of hiding the God-Speaking from outsiders, and so he is looked at as becoming the future 'God of Path', which is inferred to mean some kind of holy guardian.

Starways Congress had their hands deep in this project, having made secret genetic modifications to some people giving high intellect, but also extreme OCD-like symptoms. These people believe the Gods are speaking to them, and thus gave birth to their religion. This shows the power of Starways Congress, for they can isolate and harbor a culture such as that without allowing it to become diluted with other facets of humanity.

The Free People of Earth is a worldwide government body that appears in Shadow of the Giant and succeeding novels.

The Free People of Earth (FPE) was introduced by Peter Wiggin, Hegemon of the Earth in Shadow of the Giant in an attempt to create a world government free of war. Peter developed a Constitution of the Free People of Earth, which indicated that only democratic countries which guaranteed civil rights would be allowed in. Before a nation was to be inducted, it was required that the nation hold a plebiscite in which the people of that nation voted to join. Unlike previous international government organizations, the Free People was intended to have a strong central government to control all armed forces and foreign affairs for its members. Peter explained to Virlomi, "We'll keep the word nation, but it will come to mean what state means in America. An administrative unit, but little more."

The Free People of Earth also recognized groups that were not previously independent, especially groups that wished to separate from their parent nations.

According to Peter, the military of the Free People consist of the combined militaries of all its member nations, though at all points during the novel it suggests that each nation's military still acts separately, though usually under the control of a Battle School graduate with an affiliation with the Free People. As the novel progresses, though, more alliances between national militaries are clear, and it is apparent that they join forces later on during the conflict between China, Russia, and the Islamic world.

In the last chapter, Peter mentions that Petra Arkanian remains head of the defense department of the Free People; she is the last member of Ender's jeesh to remain on Earth.

Prior to and during the First Invasion, there was an early attempt at creating an international task force called the Mobile Operations Police (or MOPs). The MOPs were made up of the cream of the crop of elite military units across the world. The field commander of the MOPs was Captain DeWit "Wit" Clinton O'Toole, formerly of the United States Navy SEALs, under the oversight of the Strategoi, a group of military commanders from the nations making up the United Nations Security Council. Each MOP was expected to not only follow orders but be able to improvise on the spot and, most of all, be prepared for any conceivable situation. In fact, while the first Formic ship was traveling to Earth, with most people still being unaware of the threat, O'Toole ordered his men to train for the possibility of an alien invasion. Thus, when the Formics landed in China, the MOPs proved to be the most effective fighting unit and managed to destroy one of the three landers. In the end, it was the MOPs (aided by the resources of Jukes Ltd. and a free miner named Victor Delgado) who infiltrated the Formic starship, eliminated the crew, and prevented the Formic attempt to re-take the ship. Captain O'Toole gave his life to keep the starship and its technology intact, so Earth could study it and prepare for future meets with the Formics. Prior to his death, O'Toole placed Captain Mazer Rackham of the New Zealand Special Air Service in command of the MOPs, despite the fact that Mazer failed O'Toole's test and was rejected from the unit prior to the invasion. In order to prevent any public confusion about this, the Strategoi suppressed Mazer's participation in the operation from the public.

Immediately, after the First Invasion, the leading nations of the world announce the creation of the International Fleet, using the MOPs as the model for soldiers from all across the world working together as one. The MOPs, along with many of the other military organizations on Earth, was disbanded with the expectation that they would join the IF. The position of the Strategos, one of the two military leaders of the IF, is named after the MOPs oversight committee, and the first Strategos was the chairman of the Strategoi during the invasion, Lieutenant Colonel Yulian Robinov of the Russian Ministry of Defense.